Why Your Lab QC Might Be Missing Critical Errors
Editors in Conversation
Accurate AST results are the backbone of diagnostic stewardship, yet routine quality control (QC) might be missing subtle shifts that skew your hospital’s annual antibiogram. By examining a real-world "silent failure" in daptomycin testing, we explore how lab-driven data is essential to the AMR crisis response and why the human eye—and traditional QC bugs—aren't always enough to catch technical drifts. This session breaks down the importance of LIS rules, alert fatigue, and the future of automated susceptibility testing. Guests: Laurel J. Glaser, M.D., Ph.D. Rebekah Dumm, Ph.D. D(ABMM) ...
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Phage JS1: The Virus Breaking the Rules
Editors in Conversation
In this episode, a fascinating new bacteriophage, JS1. While most contractile phages (which inject DNA like a spring-loaded syringe) are rigid and straight, JS1 sports a curved, flexible tail that may help it navigate the complex "canyons and valleys" of the bacterial cell wall. Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/eDGta8xc4_0 Guests: Sabrina Suhani, Ph.D., Graduate Student, Monash University, Australia Trevor Lithgow, Ph.D., Professor, Monash University’s Biomedical Discovery Institute. Links: with a tail that is both curved and contractile This episode of Editors in Conversation...
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Urine-based Testing to Detect HPV
Editors in Conversation
Is the future of cervical cancer screening non-invasive? Sharmila Manjeshwar, Ph.D. and Jeffrey Klausner M.D. MPH, discuss a breakthrough in HPV diagnostics: urine-based testing. While vaccination and clinical screening have reduced cervical cancer rates, participation has stalled due to barriers like healthcare access and the invasive nature of traditional clinician-collected samples. This conversation explores how novel high-volume urine concentration technology is changing the landscape, making screening more accessible, private, and efficient. Watch this episode:...
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The Aerobiome - The Hidden Biology of Air
Editors in Conversation
Most microbiome research focuses on soil, oceans, or hosts. But the atmosphere itself harbors diverse communities of bacteria and fungi that move between ecosystems. This episode explores a recent mBio study comparing airborne microbial communities above a subalpine forest and a grassland in Colorado. The conversation unpacks what the “aerobiome” is, how scientists actually sample microbes from the air, and why height, time of day, and season matter. The study reveals striking differences between fungi and bacteria, with fungi showing strong site-specific structure and environmental...
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Harnessing MALDI-TOF for MICs
Editors in Conversation
Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (or MALDI) has revolutionized the clinical microbiology laboratory, enabling rapid, accurate and cheap identification of bacteria, yeast, moulds and mycobacteria. In most labs, it has become a verb (I maldi’ed it). But – can it replace our antimicrobial susceptibility tests? Let’s find out! Guests: Dr. Frieder Schaumburg Niklas Wiesmann
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Fungi in a Warming World: Climate, Candida auris, and the Next Microbial Frontier - with Arturo Casadevall, M.D., Ph.D.
Editors in Conversation
In the inaugural episode of Editors in Conversation mBio edition, Marvin Whiteley speaks with Arturo Casadevall, infectious-disease physician-scientist, founding Editor in Chief of mBio, and a leading voice in fungal pathogenesis and scientific rigor. They explore how climate change may be reshaping the fungal kingdom, potentially eroding the thermal barrier that has historically protected humans from most fungal pathogens. Using Candida auris (C auris) as a case study, they discuss heat adaptation, antifungal resistance, and what climate change could mean for future outbreaks. The...
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Best AMR papers of 2025: A Collaboration between AAC and JID for IMARI
Editors in Conversation
The Interdisciplinary Meeting of Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation has launched! The first version of IMARI brought together researchers, clinicians, industry leaders and policymakers to address one of the greatest challenges in modern medicine: antimicrobial resistance” Check the highlights at IMARI.org and prepare for IMARI 2017 from January 27-29, 2027! The inaugural amazing conference took place in Las Vegas. This is the forst time that ASM and IDSA collaborate together in a scientific meeting. One of the sessions involved an unprecedent collaboration between two journals AAC and...
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Green Labs
Editors in Conversation
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity – and is not a future problem. Changes to the Earth’s climate driven by emission of greenhouse gases have led to glaciers shrinking, plant and animal geographic ranges shifting and historical droughts, wildfires and rainfall. What does all of this have to do with the clinical laboratory? Subscribe to Editors in Conversation on , , , or and never miss an episode. Guests: , Director of Clinical Chemistry and Associate Professor at VUMC , bioMérieux Links: : an ASM Laboratory Practices Subcommittee...
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Rising Antimicrobial Resistance in The Microbial Universe
Editors in Conversation
This is a special live recording of Editors in Conversation at the 2025 ASM Global Research Symposium in Bengaluru, India. We explore the evolving landscape of drug-resistant pathogens—from the intracellular survival strategies of Salmonella to the global rise of multidrug-resistant fungi like Candida auris. This conversation highlights the urgent need for integrated, One Health solutions to combat AMR across human, animal, and environmental domains. Watch this episode: https://youtu.be/G1KtS6MSjHs Topics discussed: The implications of the OneHealth approach for microbiology and...
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Favorite Clinical Microbiology Papers of 2025
Editors in Conversation
I almost can’t believe that we are wrapping up yet another year on the podcast this month, which has been going strong for 6 years now! And it has been another exciting year in the world of Clin Micro as well with improvements and new assays available for some of our bread and butter tests, but the year also brought about significant developments in the application of AI and digital imaging, use of NGS methods, and probably some cool AST stuff in there too among other things, with many of these advancements published in JCM. And so, as has become customary for the last 6 years, for this...
info_outlineMost microbiome research focuses on soil, oceans, or hosts. But the atmosphere itself harbors diverse communities of bacteria and fungi that move between ecosystems. This episode explores a recent mBio study comparing airborne microbial communities above a subalpine forest and a grassland in Colorado.
The conversation unpacks what the “aerobiome” is, how scientists actually sample microbes from the air, and why height, time of day, and season matter. The study reveals striking differences between fungi and bacteria, with fungi showing strong site-specific structure and environmental sensitivity, while bacteria appear more ubiquitous. They also discuss “vertical filtering,” long-distance dispersal, and what these findings mean for pathogen spread, ecosystem connectivity, and climate change.
The atmosphere is not empty space, it is an active conduit connecting microbial life across landscapes.
Guests:
- Carolyn R. Cornell, Ph.D., Department of Agricultural BiologyColorado State University
- Jane E. Stewart, Ph.D., Department of Agricultural BiologyColorado State University
Links:
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